Archive for August 21st, 2011

Technology company Apple is now worth as much as the 32 biggest euro zone banks. That's the result of the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fall, driven by sharp declines in the share price of big banks such as Spain's Santander, France's BNP Paribas, Germany's Deutsche Bank and Italy's Unicredit. Earlier on Friday the DJ STOXX euro zone banks index fell 4 percent, valuing its 32 members at $340 billion. That's based on the market capitalization of their free-float shares, which for some French banks in particular is less than 100 percent. In contrast, Apple's market capitalization has soared to $340 billion on the back of the success of innovative technology products like iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Early last week there appeared some rumors that Apple has been testing a 4G LTE-enabled iPhone with carriers. In an "internal iOS test build" was found a property list file (.plist) for LTE. This might mean that Apple was already testing LTE hardware. This LTE.plist file, however, was found only in some of the builds (GSM iPhone 4, CDMA iPad 2) and it was related to Apple's internal "Fieldtest" application.

LTE is the term the next generation wireless broadband network that is currently being deployed by both Verizon and AT&T. Data speeds for LTE should be significantly faster than the iPhone's existing 3G network.

Other rumors suggest that it is unlikely that Apple will make the jump to LTE so early with the iPhone 5, because, as Apple's Tim Cook said, the first generation of LTE chipsets forced a lot of design compromises, and Apple was unwilling to make those compromises. Such compromises could include very short battery life for mobile phones.  But, as far as we know, AT&T had installed 4G LTE equipment in a major Apple retail store and Apple had put out a job listing for field test engineers with expertise in LTE.

Apple, Intel and Microsoft are examining a new Turkish government project, which is aimed to find a company that could build and supply up to 15 million tablets for Turkish school children in the next four years.

In his interview to Anatolia news agency Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan told that the three companies are actively bidding on this government-funded project, which is called Fatih (means 'conqueror' in Turkish) according to Bloomberg.

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Recently Digitimes reported that the production of the next-gen iPad’s high resolution display remains to be a problem. As a result, Chimei Innolux Corporation didn’t get certification to become an LCD provider for Apple’s next-gen tablet.

“CMI has cut into the supply chain of iPad 2, which uses IPS panels, but the new Apple tablet is more demanding in terms of resolution, the sources said. The iPad 3 will feature a 9.7-inch panel with resolution of 2,048x1,536 compared to the iPad 2's 1,024x768”.

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Earlier it was reported that Delta Air Lines has tested iPads to facilitate communications with flight crews. Now, iPads are tested in cabin crews of British Airways to improve customer service aboard.

The company states that the iPad can help to identify the Executive Club status of their customers, what preferences in meal they have, their previous travel arrangements. With iPads, the cabin crew can quickly get access to a lot of necessary information such as timetables, customer service updates and safety manuals.

At present, after all passengers have boarded, cabin crew are handed a long paper containing information about up to 337 customers. Using iPads, cabin crew can just update information on the screen through 3G networks and get all the necessary data about passengers on board.

The iPad is currently tested with 100 cabin crew and British Airways plans to roll out the program to all senior crew members in the coming months.

According to Reuters, a pair of stores in New York City was sued by Apple for selling counterfeit Apple items. Apple filed the trademark infringement lawsuit last month but it has been suspended until now to facilitate confiscation of the counterfeit products from this stores in Flushing, Queens.

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